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My Interests
News Services Friends and Acquaintances Societies Booksellers Music Companies |
LINKSMy Interests
General InterestsThe Avengers Forever!- the most thorough and interesting Avengers site on the net - well worth a look. Start at 'The Avengers.tv' and go to 'The Avengers Forever!'. Blackcurrants - yes, that's what it says. Soon to come, my own little tribute to all things blackcurranty: teas, jams, scones, tartes, beverages: vive le cassis! The British Library - another one of those sites that never gets old, no matter how much its contents have aged. CADW - here, for the sake of perversity, is a site in Welsh. Harry Secombe would have been proud. Sites in Manx, Cornish, and Lower Hibernian are in the works. Classics and Mediterranean Archeaology - an exhaustive collection of links to anything and everything about the Classical world. Truly one of the best sites around - you could lose yourself for months exploring all of these links.
I have been a fan of Doctor Who since I was very young, and continue to believe it to be the best science fiction television series ever. From its sometimes compelling, sometimes farcically camp early days to it's final dark incarnation in the late 1980s, Doctor Who has remained a seminal influence. As those familiar with the series will already know, for various complicated reasons better described elsewhere, many of the early episodes of the programme, dating back to the first series of 1963-64, are no longer held by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Those programmes missing from the BBC archives include many such classic stories as 'Marco Polo', 'The Reign of Terror', 'The Myth Makers', 'The Tenth Planet', 'The Power of the Daleks', 'The Highlanders', 'The Evil of the Daleks', 'The Web of Fear', 'The Wheel in Space' and many others. However, due to the extraordinary efforts of a few individuals, recordings of the original broadcasts do still exist, in the form of reel-to-reel audio tapes, 8- and 16-mm film, and still photographs. These have been synthesised by members of several reconstruction teams into recreations of the episodes as they originally aired. They are well worth your time, if you are at all keen on the programme. Also take a look at the BBC's official site for Doctor Who. The Goon Show Depository - one of the best sites on the net for the greatest radio comedy of all time. This is the programme that launched, sustained, nurtured, and eventually torpedoed the careers of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Seacombe, Wallace Greenslade, and, of course, John Snagge. The genius of Spike is beyond all doubt, Jeem, take my word for it. Eh, mate? Anything that I could say about a programme which features Valentine Dyall - the most evil voice ever broadcast on a wireless - as a guest can only be said to further plumb the depths of inadequacy. Read that back, will you? I daren't. Needle-nardle-noo! {Omnes} Good! The Macintosh - if you must use a computer (and if you're reading this, then it's likely that you do), why use one that's rubbish? the Mineralogical Record - fascinating American journal of the world of mineralogy. The Navy Lark - one of the funniest radio programmes ever made. Leslie Phillips, Ronnie Barker, and in inimitable Jon Pertwee make the Royal Navy into their own private frolic, shared with millions of Home Service listeners each week for nearly twenty years (from 1959 to 1977 or so...). The Victorian Web - hosted at the University of Singapore, this site is a vast repository of all scholarly things Victorian. Very well worth a look. Mystery and
Detective Fiction
Sherlock Holmes on the Web - exhaustive, marvellous resource for all things Sherlockian - makes my own collection of Sherlock things look like a small sad heap of week-old rice pudding. Michael Innes - I would do a page about him myself, if it didn't look as though it would be so much work (the man seems to have been writing for a living, if you can believe it). I adore both Innes' detective stories, and JIM Stewart's more mainstream literary fiction (especially 'A Staircase in Surrey' - now stupidly out of print). When I've read through enough serious material, or enough of laying about doing nothing, I read Innes. From time to time, at any rate. Gladys Mitchell - here's a great and thorough site on the works on the "great Gladys", as Philip Larkin said. Desmond Bagley pages - regarding the writer of contemporary thrillers (which I really must read) operated by Nigel Alefounder, a decent fellow living on the Welsh border. The Official Inspector Morse Site - surprisingly, I couldn't find a particularly thorough site devoted to Colin Dexter, as I would think there would be a wealth of information to be assembled into a nice, exciting format (Oxford locations, actor profiles from the series, literary references, etc.). Barring that, then, the official Morse site is a good place to start, and reminds me that I've been meaning to re-read the Morse books again...perhaps in order this time. Music in English Detective Fiction - a fascinating essay which combines two of my interests.
News Services
the British Broadcasting Corporation, or try their news page the Onion - news with a twist of lemming... the Times of London - one the best newspapers in the world... the Guardian - for a different point of view... Le Monde - conservatif, mais interessant Friends and
Acquaintances
Perhaps not surprisingly, I have more of the latter than the former, but then, as is so often pointed out to me, I am an extremely difficult person to get on with. Let's be perfectly clear - I'm not naturally what is called a 'dog person'. My two year old daughter is mad about them, though, so where else to get her dog-gear (which could be a pun if I wanted to work at it) than Cartoon Dogs. This site features the quirky artistic styles of Anthony Bush, a colleague of mine who tolerates my interminable ravings with remarkable good humour. Formerly called 'All Critters Great & Small' (a warping of my contribution of 'All Creatures Great and Small', desperately trying to inject some marginal culture into Tony's life), the site is largely devoted to dogs, but if you have a creature in your life, send him a photo or two, and he'll very likely come up with something remarkable, which you can then have on a cap, mug, or shirt for all the world to see. Societies
The Margery Allingham Society - Bottle Street Online The Anthony Powell Society - devoted to the works of the late and great Anthony Powell - read A Dance to the Music of Time! The Dorothy L. Sayers Society - the official site Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (publishers of the Journal of Roman Studies) Booksellers
Amazon.com - great for many things...and growing all the time. Amazon UK - get anything that's in print in Britain. Amazon France - as above, mais en français... Amazon Canada - insert your silly Canadian joke here... Amazon Germany - auf deutsch, auf weidersehn (sic?)... ABEBooks - it was a nice alternative to Bibliofind, if slightly more mercenary. Now, as there is no longer a Bibliofind (having been gobbled up in an absent-minded moment by Amazon), it is your best option for out-of-print books. If only someone had a copy of Syme's Ammianus Marcellinus and the Historia Augusta for me that didn't cost seventy quid... AddAll.com - an interesting site which links to many, many booksellers and allows you to compare prices. Worth a look...
Music
Midnight Oil - I must say here that Capricornia (2002) blew me away, and surpassed any expectations that I might have had for a new Oils record. It's only sad that at this point it appears that Capricornia will be the final Oils disc - at least for a time, as Peter Garrett left the band to work on his environmental causes at the end of 2002. Do yourself a huge favour and get this disc, then work your way back through the catalogue. Nimbus Technology & Engineering, Ltd. - the home of Nimbus Records, who make some of the greatest classical music recordings in the world. British Composers - a thorough and comprehensive list of biographies of and links to sites about British composers. The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society - devoted to the work and life of my favourite classical composer. The Gustav Holst Site - another favourite composer. The Edward Elgar Society - home page of the Society and Foundation, with a great deal of information about the composer and his works... Companies
Acorn Media - publishers of videos and DVDs, including the first video release ever of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories starring Ian Carmichael, and now Margery Allingham's 'Campion' brought to life! |
